27 January 2012

Two small stones today. Train travel makes it easier

1.

One Winter tree, skeletal,
stranded in a verdant rainstorm field -
a picture hung on the wall
of this new home

2.

The ibis,
.     long legs half-vanished
.          in these impromptu lakes,
like lanky spear-fishers
.     before the sails and shackles,
dance
.     and probe
.          at what the rain washed out
and do not turn
.     to watch
.          the train roar past.

26 January 2012

A thrumming and screeching mass of green, yellow, orange and blue feathers swarms to seed and flower, the garden as lush as had seemed an impossible dream before I flew away. I watch, my skin slick and body heavy in air you can almost drink, surrounded by the eternal tinnitus of cicadas. I dream of a clear head, of movement, of a rockpool high on a forested mountain.

25 January 2012

Tapes from the early 1990s
An archive of my youthful heartbeat
Every note, every place I’ve been
Printed into the patterns of my flesh

A radio telescope trained to a distant star
Reveals the image of our own beginnings

24 January 2012

grey cloud, white noise day -
a thousand new-made rivers
breach our clear-cut lines

22 January 2012

The end of the song blends into the shrieks of cockatoos.
Waiting for the train, a moment of peace enforced.

23 January 2012

Fresh-cut grass, strangler fig and mulch
The butcher-bird’s song on soothing grey breeze
The moan of machinery

Old stones – not to be tied to,
But rather, to stand on
While I reach towards new light

Soft rain-drops on my face

Later, I watch the curtain of it,
Breathe the sweet that counters sweat,
Want to sever my ties to time
That I may turn my face up to the rain -
A dialogue between sea and sky
With me in the middle
Feeling the flow at last

One day soon

12 January 2012

Grateful to have pause thrust gently and warmly upon me, I sit on the floor with my cup of tea, and she hops down from the chair to sit beside me. She conjures wild visions of unlikely dinners and a less likely restaurant where she’ll live with Disney characters and all her babies, and when she left, she cast a spell with a spin of her flower-wand, with the perfect incantation: there’s no place like home.

11 January 2012

This, a moment of unwatched clock. Eyes still wide in defiance of sleep’s gravity, but at last, the breath moves with the carrot and ginger steam.

16 January 2012

1.

My sister calls to me as I’m packing my suitcase: it’s snowing. I love you, too, Berlin.

2.

The frozen puddles and channels recede into misted trees where the sky comes down into the land. The sleeping trees like fans of coral stand ornate in deep bright green. My eyes and head and bags are heavy, but my heart rolls along, my fingers tingling with the love I leave behind yet take with me; I move backwards, looking back fondly, but look at last towards the next great unknown.

3.

Low sun puts a golden star at the top of every pine tree.

17 January 2012

Warm strained-muscle legs
carry me to look once more
on fallen leaves and their collections
of perfect cold geometry

moss stains on my knees